Secrets and Acceptance
by Sarah August
Summary: Damon's pov of Realizations of a Girl. Damon realizes Elena is slipping away from him and he begrudgingly prepares himself for the reality of losing her to Stefan. One-shot. Based after 5x4. More Stelena than Delena.


**Title: Secrets and Acceptance**

**Summary: Damon's pov to _Realizations of a Girl_. Damon realizes that it's only a matter of time until he loses something, _someone_ that wasn't intended for him. Damon pov and based on 5x4, but very Stelena. **

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He found her like that, crying on his bed. _Their bed_ now. Stefan was gone and the service for Bonnie was now over, and Elena couldn't seem to make peace with either one.

Damon was worried. Not for her mental state. He knew she was back in control and wouldn't let go like that again. He was worried about what Elena wasn't saying, what she wasn't sharing with him.

She had been devastated upon hearing that Bonnie had died months ago and she hadn't been the wiser, but Elena was also wreaked over the fact that his brother had left them again. Not just with guilt, it was more for her, and she wasn't telling him what she was thinking.

Did Elena want to go after his brother? Damon knew she'd chase Stefan to the ends of the earth if she believed it would help him, _save him_ from what Tessa had done. But then what? Did Elena regret her decision in choosing to be with him? Damon knew she'd never say anything like that to him, _ever_. She was Elena, not _Katherine_. Elena always considered the feelings of others.

Accept when it came to his brother and himself.

Elena wasn't like Katherine, but she could never choose between them, no matter how much she had wanted too. She was always afraid she'd lose one if she picked the other. She had decided on Stefan and that was supposed to be that, but _Elena_ had died.

Becoming a vampire made Elena believe she'd become someone else entirely different from herself. In some ways she had, _in others_ she was still _the same girl_. The girl who had loved Stefan too much to ever break up with him for any reason. Even if she had fallen for his brother a bit during a time she had been apart from Stefan. And it had been _just a bit_. Elena's feelings for Stefan had always been stronger. It was why she had never chosen himself. It had been _always Stefan_ for her.

But then that stupid sire bond had taken control over Elena's decision making and feelings, and her feelings for him had become more intense. Elena vowed up and down that she had felt that way because she actually _did_ fall in love with him, but Damon now had to wonder if she would have chosen him if there had _been no sire bond_. Would have Elena gotten to that point on her own and picked him?

Damon was terrified of the answer. If it was no then he was apart of something that robbed something very precious from his brother. Elena had always been the light to his brothers darkness. Somehow managing to keep a vicious monster inside his brother in check, even when she had been human. Elena was what kept Stefan grounded and she challenged him to fight to be something more then that monster that gives into the blood. And then flash to present time where Stefan _lost that girl_ who saved him every day they were together, and even without his memories Stefan _still managed_ to remember how he felt about Elena. Then he found out they were no longer together. That the special girl who had meant so much to him was now _shockingly with his brother._

Yes, the writing was on the wall. Part of Damon wanted to go on denying it, keep Elena as long as he could, but she was slipping away from him. And because of how he felt for her, when the time came, he was going to have to let her go when she figured this out too. No matter how much he selfishly wanted to keep her for himself.

She was so close to figuring it out and it would be soon when she came to him for _that conversation._ The one where she tells him that her love for Stefan is still there and she'd been ignoring it because it meant coming to terms with what she was now and who she was then. It was something Elena hadn't been ready for since she died and she had happily went along with him because he hadn't been the one wanting her to accept and come to terms with it all so she could move on. When that happened, and it would soon, Elena would realize that she was still t_hat girl_ who died. And Damon would lose her then because _that gir_l always would love Stefan more than him.

Hearing her tears stop, Damon entered their bedroom after hearing Elena fall asleep. His heart shuttered briefly in his chest as he tried to force his greatest fears away.


End file.
